How do you celebrate a failure? Answering this question should not prove hard for North Korea because the regime is in the business of mythmaking to hide its flaws.

But there was no way to conceal what transpired in the country on Friday morning. The failed launch of the Eunha-3 rocket, with international media in attendance, was a tremendous embarrassment – and perhaps the first mistake made by Kim Jong-eun, the country’s inexperienced new leader, thought to be 29 years old.

The launch of the rocket – which exploded after only seconds in the air either because of a malfunction immediately after lift-off or because a faulty guidance system caused the flight to be aborted – was the eighth provocative event in the past 36 months designed to give Mr Kim the macho leadership credentials he would need to run the country after the death of his father, who finally died last December.